


Firestarter

by Nubriema



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Affairs, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Tragic Romance, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5046682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nubriema/pseuds/Nubriema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ficlet to the question "How do you stop loving somebody when they have stopped loving you?", a.k.a. that one time I accidentally participated in a challenge and destroyed my OTP with my substitute ship...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firestarter

**Author's Note:**

> This belongs within the challenge that went around in the Lokane fandom on Tumblr last year ["How do you stop loving somebody when they have stopped loving you?"], initiated by [lokanemysecretpleasure](http://lokanemysecretpleasure.tumblr.com/) and startraveller776.

 

He is a broken man when he comes to her.

This time, she knows, broken beyond repair.

She knows it from the way his eyes have dulled, from the falter in his steps, from the way he crumbles at her feet and puts his head in her lap without even attempting to put on a mask, to weave a lie about himself and smoothe it over the cracks.

This time, not even her gentle caress will be able to stitch his ripped and bleeding heart back together, if only for a while.

This time, they have shredded it beyond recognition, and she is left to pick up the pieces.

Sigyn has often wondered whether Jane Foster's arrival in Asgard would not eventually be the downfall of them all.

This time, she knows she was right.

She remembers, years ago, how she watched Sif fall first. How she sat many a night at a deserted banquet table, trying to keep her friend from washing her tears away with mead and ale. How thunder rumbled in the distance and lightning cracked the skies all over Asgard, when really it came from Thor's private chambers, mere two corridors away.

Next fell Loki, and thus she herself also, and that was the time when Sigyn learned how to make torn hearts look intact, and discovered that not even gods were safe from the havoc humans can wreak on another's life.

Especially not gods, it appears.

That was the time she first felt him slip away slowly, never letting her go, dragging her along into the mess. That was the time she began to lie for his sake, and told him that she could become whatever he desired her to be, the time the word ' _wife_ ' came to mean ' _friend_ ' instead of ' _lover_ ' when it left his mouth.

That was the time when she learned how to live off breadcrumbs of affection, when she started pretending not to notice, not to mind, that she could feel the whisper of her husband's magic on her skin while he held her in his arms, but gazed at someone else.

One day she saw Loki and Jane Foster exchange glances over dinner, and that was the time she found in their eyes the reason why her husband did not share her bed as often as he used to, and realized that Thor had fallen, too.

That was when Sigyn understood how much power a mere Midgardian could wield, holding the very lives of four gods in her fragile little hands, thunder and magic sizzling her skin and vieing for her attention, and Sigyn could not help but stand in awe before that woman.

That was when she did not wonder anymore how Jane Foster had survived bearing the Aether.

That was when she became convinced that Jane Foster was the true goddess among them, infallible, indestructible, changing every life she touched for better or worse.

Which is why Loki's presence at her feet confounds her, and why the fact that he reaches for her hands and grasps them like a dying man scares her.

Seeing her husband with his heart torn to shreds can only mean one thing, and that is how she knows that Jane Foster _was_ their downfall after all, and Sigyn is terrified of what she is about to do.

When Loki's tears wet her dress and her own fall into raven locks, he mumbles words against her legs – words she only comprehends because she saw their meaning in his gleamless eyes already, and _her_ tears are not merely for Jane Foster, hers are for all of them.

Because Jane Foster is dead, and Sigyn knows she will pull them all down with her.

When Loki finally looks up at her, there is madness in his eyes, a kindling fire washed in emerald, and Sigyn recognizes it as the first spark of destruction, because her husband, in his silver tongue, asks her to burn all of Asgard down with him.

And Sigyn weeps, for all of them, because she knew her answer before he posed the question.

The answer she does _not_ know, however, is the one to a question she has been asking herself for years, ever since Jane Foster came to the Golden City and Loki's heart was never her own again:

_How do you stop loving somebody when they have stopped loving you?_

 


End file.
